Books about the erasure of memory are usually about its opposite - the real subject of works as diverse as TS Eliot’s The Waste Land and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is the struggle for fragments of recollection to shore against the ruins

Britain’s top literary award includes American titles for the first time this year. We asked top writers and critics which novels should have won had US authors been eligible throughout the prize’s history

A first novel holds a special place in an author's heart – sometimes it is the only book they will write, sometimes the best. Occasionally, the writer would prefer to forget it altogether.
Nicholas Royle reports